.T34 

. HE PACIFIC RAILROADS AND THE DIS- 
APPEARANCE OF THE FRONTIER 
IN AMERICA 

BY 

FREDERIC L. PAXSON 



Reprinted from the Annual Report of the American Historical Association 
for 1907, Volume I, pages 105-122 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1909 




Class. 
Book. 






'I<i;si:nti;i) iiv 



THE PACIFIC RAILROADS AND THE DIS- 
APPEARANCE OF THE FRONTIER 
IN AMERICA 



FREDERIC L. PAXSON 



Reprinted from the Annual Report of the American Historical Association 
for 1907, Volume I, pages 105-122 






WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1909 



T3^ 



iforam) 

23 J! '09 



VII. THE PACIFK^ RAILROADS AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 
FRONTIER IN AMERICA. 



By FREDERIC L. PAXSON, 

Junior Professor ni tlie Unirersitj/ of Michigan. 



THE PACIFIC RAILROADS AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE FRONTIER 
IN AMERICA. 



By Frederic L. Paxson. 



Within recent years it has become a commonplace in American his- 
tory that the influence of the frontier is the one constant to be reck- 
oned with in accounting for the development of American life dur- 
ing its first century of independent existence. The frontier has been 
defined so as to describe the line dividing a western area, chiefly un- 
occupied by whites, and an eastern region given over to an increasing 
agriculture. In the face of an advancing population it has retreated 
rapidly from the fall line to the semiarid plains, where it finally dis- 
appeared in the decade of the eighties. Its influence did much in 
directing American life during its period, and since its passing new 
national problems and ideals have marked a change in both people 
and government of the United States. 

The passing of the frontier is the phenomenon of the eighties, now 
generally accepted, yet like most matters of recent history not realh' 
demonstrated. Its best historian remarked, in 1803, that " now. four 
centuries after the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred 
years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with 
its going has closed the first period of American history." « Its pass- 
ing is not, however, undemonstrated because of its difficulty, since 
the facts of the years from 1880 to 1885 throw themselves naturally 
into groupings whose logical key is this idea of the completion of 
the first period of national growth. 

There have been two frontiers in the United States that have con- 
trolled periods of national thought by their duration. In the forties 
and early fifties a broad, sparsely settled frontier lay between the old 
East and the Missouri and Mississippi settlements. Wagon roads and 
canals connected the distant borders, but the resulting unity was so 
slight that the completion of the trunk-line railroads in the fifties 
worked a revolution in economic and intellectual conditions. Just 
how far the northern spirit that maintained the Union is the result 
of these developments in transportation no one has measured. 

" F. J. Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, In Annual Keport 
of the American Historicai Association, 1893, 227. 

107 



7 



108 AMERICAN TIISTORTOAL ASSOCIATIOX. 

The crossing of this okl eastern frontier U'ft but one difficult are:i 
in the United States. From the western boundary of Missouri. 
Arkansas, and Iowa to the Pacific States stretched the great Ameri- 
can desert with its deficiencies in rainfall and its scanty native i)opu- 
lation." So long as this area remained intact the frontier continued 
to exert its dominant influence, but when it succumbed to the pressure 
of economic advance the frontier was gone forever. The years from 
18G9 to 1884 cover the final period in the life of the last frontier. 
The beginning of the end comes with the completion of the Union 
and Central Pacific railways in ISOl); the period closes with the open- 
ing of the other Pacific railways in 1882-1884. 

The great American desert became a reality in frontier life as early 
as 1811). Until this time the edge of the frontier had been east of 
the Mississij)pi River, and its people had depended on the East. But 
the settlement of Missouri l)rougiit population to tlie bend of the 
Missouri Kiver by 1819, and within the influence of an overland trade 
that beckoned from the Spanish towns at Santa Fe. This Santa Fe 
trade was an important element in frontier prosperity from the 
erection of Fort Leavenworth in 1827 until the Mexican war.** In 
these years the route across the plains and ahmg the Arkansas and 
Purgatory rivers was worn deeper and deeper.'" In the middle of the 
forties the call of the Northwest drew another trail from Fort Leaven- 
worth along the Platte, by South Pass, and down the Snake Kiver 
into Oregon, while the diggings on the Sacramento tempted the 
Forty-niners across the Nevada desert and along the Humboldt into 
California. "When the Mexican war was over Congress was facing 
a territorial problem on the Pacific coast that was made more diffi- 
cult by the existence of the great frontier which divided the centers 
of American life. Yet already the overland trails, inadequate as 
they were, had revealed the possibility and early necessity of rail- 
road routes extending from ocean to ocean. 

When the agitation for a Pacific Railway commenced there were 
these two beaten tracks connecting the Missouri River and the Pacific. 
Trappers and explorers had pointed out the possibility of other routes, 

" Popular imagination exajjKerated the decree of aridity wliich prevailed in the desert. 
MaJ. Stcplicn II. LonK. who visited the Rocky Mountains in 1820, slated that tlie area 
was "almost wliolly unlit for (Miltivation. and of couiso uiiinli.»I)ital)l<' liy a pooplc depeml- 
Sna \ipon aKi'itiilture for tlicir suhsistcncf." (I{. (i. Tliwailcs. Karly Westi-rn Travels, 
XI\'. L'O. » The accounts of tlic I. on;: <'.\pcdItion occupy four volumes in Thwaites. 'I'lii-ir 
unfavoral)le esliinate lielped to shape the popular iniaKinalii>n. 

''Occasional trips to Santa I'e ;;ave way al)out ISiTi to fairly rcKular traflic. Con- 
Kress in IHiTi authorized tlie constiuction i«f a wagon load for its use. (II. 11. J'.an- 
croft. Worl<s, XVll, -MV.i ; .T. W. Million, State Aid to Railways in Missouri, 1, 2.) A 
military post was eslablislied in 1X27 at Cantonment Leavenworth, from which point the 
Slxtli Infantry opeiated as escort to the caravans. (Report of the Quartermaster-(!eneral 
to tlie Secretary of War, 1.S27, 2(>th ("onR., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1, p. 79, and p. 48. Insert 
'• d." See also Secretary Katon's Report, 182i», 21st Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1, p. 30.) 

•• .Tosiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, or the .Tournal of a Santa Fe Trader, 2 vols., 
New V()rl«. 1845. is the classic account of tlie Santa Fe traffic. The book, often reprinted, 
is in Thwaites, Karly Western Trav.'ls, XIX, .\X. 



PACIFIC EAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. 109 

but the pressure of population along the easiest channels of communi- 
cation had developed the prominence of the Missouri bend, between 
Independence and Council Bluffs, as the chief eastern point of de- 
parture." Hence the two trails from P'ort Leavenworth by the Platte 
and Arkansas carried most of the Pacific traffic that journeyed over- 
land. By 1850 the systematic lobbying of Asa Whitney and his allies 
had educated the public to an acceptance of the railway idea, but the 
emergence of slavery sectionalism had made a choice among par- 
ticular routes impossible.* Until after 1853 the only progress made 
was the survey of five available routes ordered by the army appro- 
priation bill of that year,'' and until after the elimination of southern 
influence, in 1861, no further step Avas taken. In all these years, while 
the old eastern transportation frontier was in process of demolition, 
the rivalry of New Orleans, Vicksburg, Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, 
and Chicago, and their hinterlands kept the western frontier un- 
broken. 

In the history of the frontier the Union Pacific Railway marks tlie 
beginning of the end. Chartered in 1862,'^ reendowed in 1864,'^ started 
on its race for lands and subsidies in 1866,^ it finally completed a 
through track across the continent in 1869. The celebration of com- 
pletion at Promontory Point on May 10, 1869, was not unnoticed even 
in its own day as a national act.^ The public was generally conscious 
that a great event had taken place ; cities devoted themselves to open 
demonstration ; Bret Harte broke into song under its influence.'' But 
in reality the frontier was not destroyed. From a narrow strip 
across the plains Indians had been pushed to one side and another 
and a single track had crossed the mountains, but north and south 
great areas remained untouched, for the demolition of the frontier 
had only -just begun.* 

« For several years Fort Atkinson, at Council Bluffs, was the chief military post on 
the far western frontier. The erection of Fort Leavenworth, which was more con- 
veniently situated for policing the trails, lessened its importance. In 1825 there were 
stationed at Fort Atkinson four companies of the First Infantry and ten of the Sixth. 
(Report of General Brown to the Secretary of War, 1825, 19th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 1, 
p. 10. insert "d.") 

"The genesis of the Pacific railway idea is traced in .T. P. Davis, The Union Pacific 
Railway, 1-110, and in E. V. Smalley. History of the Northern Pacific Railroad, 1-112. 

<^ The reports on these surveys fill eleven large volumes. They were published as :VM 
Cong.. 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 78. Cf. Tables of and Annotated Index to the Congressional 
Series of United States Public Documents. Washington, 1902, 551, note. 

" 12 United States Statutes at Large, 489. 

« 13 United States Statutes at Large, 356. 

f 14 United States Statutes at Large, 79. 

Davis, Union Pacific Railway, 152 ; J. H. Beadle, The Undeveloped West ; or. Five 
Years in the Territories, Philadelphia, 1873. 126 ; Sidney Dillon. The Last Spike, In 
Scribner's Magazine. XII, 25.'?-259 ; Samuel Bowles, The I'acific Railroad Open, in Atlantic 
Monthly, XXIII, 493-502, 617-625, 753-762; H. H. Bancroft, History of California, 
VII. 570; Rocky Mountain Directory and Colorado Gazetteer for 1871, 117. 

* Bret Harte. What the Engines Said, in Poetical Works, 1882, 283. 

' F. A. Walker, in North American Review, CXVI, 367. 



IIU AMERICANS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

The effort that finally destroyed the continental frontier differed 
from all earlier movements in the same direction in that it was self- 
conscious, deliberate, and national. " The frontier reached by the 
Pacific Railroad, surveyed into rectangles, guarded by the United 
States Army, and recruited by the daily immigrant ship, moves for- 
ward at a swifter pace and in a different way than the frontier 
reached by the birch canoe or the pack horse," * The idea of com- 
munication as a proper public charge was slow in growth. Over the 
Cumberland road had been fought a great constitutional battle in 
the twenties.^ Subsequent national aid^ had been granted for im- 
provement schemes through the several States involved. But in the 
I*acific railways Congress now dealt directly and immediately with 
the object before it.'' The financial settlement with the Pacific rail- 
ways is so recent that the land grants are still in politics, but in 18()2 
10 sections of land and a loan of $10,000 in United States bonds per 
mile of track did not tempt capital into the forlorn scheme. Con- 
struction could not be financed until the act of 18()4 had doubled the 
10 sections into 20 and allowed the railway company to insert its own 
first mortgage, to the amount of the government subsidy, ahead of 
the federal bonds as a lien upon the property. With even this, re- 
sponsible builders required so large a margin of profit that the con- 
struction of the road became a matter of noisome public scandal.'' 
And in our own day a changed financial condition has made it diflicult 
to understand the reasonableness of the original terms. 

While the Union Pacific was under construction Congress pro- 
vided the legal equipment for the annihilation of the entire frontier. 
The charter acts of the Northern Pacific, the Atlantic and Pacific, 
the Texas Pacific, and the Southern Pacific at once opened the way 
for some five new continental lines and closed the period of direct 
federal aid to railway construction. The Northern Pacific received 
its charter on the same day that the Union Pacific received its doiible 
subsidy in 1804." It was authorized to join the waters of Lake Supe- 
rior and Puget Sound, and to receive for its services 20 sections of 
l^ublic land in the States through which it ran and 40 in the Terri- 
tories. No bonds were granted it, the Union Pacific experiment re- 
maining the first and the last in this direction. 



« F. J. Turner, in American Historical Association Report. 189,S, 20fi. 

"J. S. Young, A Political and Constitutional Study of the Cumberland Road, Chicago, 
1902. 

•^ J. B. Sanborn, Congressional Grants of Land in Aid of Railways, In University of 
Wisconsin Bulletins, No. .SO. Is a comprehensive study of these grants. The Illinois 
("entral grant of 1850, which started the policy of land grants for railways, is thor- 
oughly treated by W. K. Aclterman, Historical Sketch of the Illinois Central Railroad. 
Chicago. 1890. 

■* The Contract and Finance Company, which operated for the Central Pacific, escaped 
public notice, but the CrMlt Moblller of the Union Pacific played a large part in the cam- 
paign of 1872. (J. B. Crawford. Credit Moblller of America : R. Hazard. CrMlt Moblller 
of America. Providence, 1881 ; J. F. Rhodes. History of the United States, VII. 1-18.) 

< 13 United States Statutes at Large, 365. 



PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. Ill 

In the sumer of 1866 " a third continental route was provided for 
in the South along the line of the thirty-fifth parallel survey. The 
Atlantic and Pacific was to build from Springfield, Mo., by way of 
Albuquerque, N. Mex., to the Pacific, and to connect near the eastern 
line of California with the Southern Pacific of California. Its 
subsidy of public lands was like that of the Northern Pacific. 

The Texas Pacific was chartered March 3, 1871, as -the last of the 
land-grant railroads. It was to build from the eastern border of 
_^ Texas to San Diego, Cal., and was promised the usual grant of 20 or 
^^ 40 sections. But since there were no public lands of the United States 
in Texas its eastern divisions received no aid from this source, while 
its more vigorous rival, the Southern Pacific, prevented its line from 
passing beyond El Paso. As usual, the Southern Pacific of California 
had been authorized to meet the new road near the Colorado River 
and had received a 20-section grant. It did better than its federal 
charter anticipated and organized subsidiary corporations in Arizona 
and New Mexico, w^hich built rapidly and met the Texas Pacific at 
the Rio Grande. 

To these deliberate acts in aid of the Pacific railways others in the 
form of local grants were made between 1862 and 1871, so that by 
the latter date all of the grants had been made, and all that the com- 
panies could ask for the future was lenient treatment.'' For the first 
time the Federal Government had taken an active initiative in provid- 
ing for the destruction of a frontier. It resolved in 1871 to treat no 
longer with Indian tribes as independent nations,*" and used the 
Regidar Army so vigorously that by 1880 " the majority of the waste- 
ful and hostile occupants of millions of acres of valuable agricultural, 
pasture, and mineral lands [had] been forced upon reservations 
under the supervision of the Government * * * and the vast sec- 
tion over which the wild and irresponsible tribes once wandered 
[were] redeemed from idle waste to become a home for millions of 
progressive people." <* 

The new Pacific railroads began to build just as the Union Pacific 
was completed and opened to traffic. In competition with more 
promising enterprises in the East, they were slow in arousing popular 
interest. There was little belief in a continental business large 
enough to maintain four systems, and a general confidence in the 
desert character of the semiarid plains. Their first period of construc- 
tion ended abruptly in 1873, when panic brought most transportation 

° 14 United States Statutes at Large, 292. 

"G. W. Julian, Our Land-Grant Railways in Congress, in International Review, XIV, 
198-212. 

"■ This determination was reached in a proviso in the Indian appropriation bill of 
March 3. 1871. (16 U. S. Stat, at L., 566.) 

•* Record of Engagements with Hostile Indians within the Military Division of the 
Missouri, from 1868 to 1882, Lieut. Gen. P. H. Sheridan, commanding, Chicago. 1882, 
119. 



112 AMERICAN msrnUICAI. A68l»ClATl()N. 

projects to an inglorious end and forbade revival for at least five 
years. 

Jay Cooke, whose Philadelphia house had done much to establish 
public credit during the war and had created a market of small 
buyers for investment securities on the strength of United States 
bonds, popularized the Northern Pacific in 18()9 and 1870." Within 
two years he is said to have raised thirty millions for the construction 
of the road, making its building a financial possibility. And 
although he may have distorted the isotherm several degrees in order 
to picture his farming lands as semitroi)ical in their luxuriance,'' he 
established Duluth and Tacoma, gave St. Paul her opportunity, and 
had run the main line of track through Fargo, on the Red, to Bis- 
marck, on the Missouri, more than 850 miles from Lake Superior, 
when his failure, in 1878, brought expansion to an end. 

For the Northwest the construction of the Northern Pacific was of 
fundamental importance. The railway frontier of 18(55) left Minne- 
sota, Dakota, and much of Wisconsin beyond its reach. The poten- 
tial grain fields of the Red River region Avere virgin forest, and on 
the main line of the new road, for 2,000 miles, no trace of settled 
habitation existed. From the summer of 1870 activity around the 
head of Lake Superior dates. The Lake Superior and Mississippi 
Railway was started to connect St. Paul and the lake at a point at 
which '' a few papers signed in Philadelphia have made a great north- 
Avestern port and market possible — nay inevitable." '' 

At Thom])son's Junction on this road the Northern Pacific made a 
connection, securing its entrance into Duluth by buying a half inter- 
est in the tracks it used and building its own line west across the Mis- 
sissippi River at Brainerd.'' The statute of 18(54 made Lake Superior 
the eastern terminus, but the logic of trade brought to St. Paul in 
later years the terminus in fact. 

The panic of 1873 caught the Northern Pacific at Bismarck, with 
nearly 800 unprofitable miles of track extending in advance of the 
railroad frontier. The Atlantic and Pacific and Texas and Pacific 
Avere less seriously overbuilt, but not less eflectively checked. The 
former, starting from Springfield, had constructed across southwest- 
ein Missouri to A^inita,<^ in Indian Territory, Avhere it arriA'ed in the 
fall of 1871.^ It had meauAvhile consolidated with the old South- 

" E. V. ObprhoUzor, .Tay Cooke, Financior of the Civil War, II, 74-.'i77 ; Smalloy, 
Northern raciric. 1.S4-177. 

» Snth a cliaiKe was made by Gen. W. H. Hazen, writing from Fort Buford, at the 
junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone, in the North American Review (CXX, 21), under 
the title " The great middle region of the United States and Us limited space of arable 
land." 

"• .1. T. Trowbridge, A Week at Duluth, in Atlantic Monthly, May, 1870, 605. 

'' Smalloy, Northern Facific, 187. .'{81. 

' Beadle, who visited A'inita and the Indian country In 1872, Ijas a picturesque descrip- 
tion of this " thirty-flfth parallel route." J. H. Beadle, Undeveloped West, 351. 

/Poor, Manual of the Railroads of the United States, 1875-76, 741. 



# 



PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OE FRONTIER. 113 

west Branch, of Missouri (recently renamed the South Pacific), so 
that from Springfield it could now get into St. Louis over its own 
tracks for most of the way. It had also, in 1872, leased for a long 
term the Pacific of Missouri, with its dependencies. But the panic 
forced it into default, the lease was canceled, and the Atlantic and 
Pacific itself emerged from the receiver's hand as the St. Louis and 
San Francisco." Vinita was and remained its terminus for several 
years, and the completion of the road as a part of the Pacific system 
was in a different direction and under a still different conti;ol. 

The Texas Pacific represented Texas corporations already existing 
when it received its land grant in 1871. It shortly consolidated local 
lines in northeast Texas, changed its name to Texas and Pacific,^ and 
began construction from Texarkana and Shreveport to Dallas and 
Fort Worth, on its road to El Paso. At the former points it caught 
its eastern termini, as did the Atlantic and Pacific at Springfield, Mo. 
The St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern ran from Texarkana to 
St. Louis, while from Shreveport, down the Red River to New Or- 
leans, the New Orleans Pacific finally undertook the construction of 
the lines. This borderland of Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas thus 
became a center of railway development; in the grazing country be- 
hind it the meat-packing industries shortly found their sources of 
supply, and in our own day the State of Oklahoma is its concrete 
memorial. 

The failure of Jay Cooke & Co. in the autumn of 1873 started the 
general financial panic of that year and deferred for several years the 
extinction of the frontier.'' It would have been remarkable had the 
waste and speculation of the civil war period and its enthusiasm for 
economic development escaped the retribution that economic law 
brings upon inflation. The Granger activities of the years immedi- 
ately following the panic foreshadowed a period when the frontier 
demand for raihvays at any cost should give way to an agricultural 
insistence upon regulation of railways as the primary need. But as 
3'et the frontier remained substantially intact,*^ and until its railway 
system should be completed the Granger demand could not be trans- 
lated into federal activity. For nearly six years after 1873 the Pacific 
railways, like the other industrial establishments of the United States, 
remained nearly stationary. 

In 1879 the United States emerged from the confusion of the crisis 
of 1873. Resumption marked the readjustment of national cur- 

"Poor, Manual, 187:1-74, 520; 1877-78, 826. 

".A^ct of May 2. 1872, 27 United States Statutes at Large, 59; Poor, Manual, 1871-72, 
548; 187G-77, 70:! ; 1877-78, .'{45. 

"^ E. W. Martin, History of the Grange Movement, 1874, 184 ; Snialley, Northern 
Pacific, inn. 

" E. E. Sparks, National Development (Vol. XXIH in Hart's American Nation), 21-23, 
describes the distribution of populatiou in this region. 

5SS33— VOL 1—08 8 



114 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

rency, reconstruction was over, and the railways entered upon the 
last five years of the culminating period in the history of the fron- 
tier. When the five years had ended five new continental routes were 
available for transportation and the frontier had departed from the 
United States. 

Although it had no continental franchise of its own. the Southern 
Pacific led in the completion of these new routes and acquired an 
interest in three eastern termini as a result. The Northern Pacific 
in the same years completed its own main line, while the Burlington- 
Kio (irrande combination introduced at once a rival to the Union 
Pacific and an additional continental route. 

The Texas and Pacific had only started its progress across Texas 
when checked by the panic in the vicinity of Dallas. "\Mien it 
revived it consolidated with the New Orleans Pacific to get its entry 
into New Orleans," and then proceeded to push its track across the 
State, aided by a state land grant from Texas, toward Sierra Blanca 
and El Paso. Beyond Texas it never built. Corporations of New 
^Mexico, Arizona, and California, all bearing the same name of 
Southern Pacific, constructed the line across the Colorado River and 
along the (iila through the lands ac(|uired by the (iadsden purchase 
in 1853. '^ Trains Avere running over its tracks to St. Louis by Jan- 
uary, 1882, and to New Orleans in the following October. In the 
course of this Southern Pacific construction connection had been 
made with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe at Deming, N. ]\Iex.. 
in March, 1881. But lack of harmony between the roads thus meet- 
ing seems to have minimized the im])ortance of the through route 
thus formed.'" 

The owners of the Southern Pacific opened an additional line 
through southern Texas in the beginning of 1883.'* The Galveston, 
Harrisburg and San Antonio, of Texas, was the earliest road char- 



" Poor, Manual, 18S4, S."(2. The New Orleans Pacific was the assifmoe of the Now 
Orleans, Baton KouRe and VlcksburK. to which a land grant had been made in 1871. 
Congress annulled a portion of the grant In 1887. Sanborn, Congressional Grants of 
Land in Aid of Railways, 125. 

'"The Soiitliern I'acific seized the Fort Yuma crossing of the Colorado River in spite 
of federal and Texas and Pacific protests. (4.5th Cong., 2d sess., II. lOx. Doc. 3."?.) It 
later induced the Texas and Pacific to transfer to it the land grants west of El Paso 
pertaining to the latter road, and insisted before Congress upon its right to receive the 
lands although the grants were voidable, if not void, l)ecause of the failure of the 
Texas and Pacific to build witliln the time limit prescribed. (48tb Cong.. 1st sess., S. 
Ex. Doc. 27.) Congressional committees reported adversely to this claim of the Southern 
Pacific. (4Hth Cong., 1st sess., II. Uep. G2 ; see also the reports to the House In 1S77, 
44th Cong.. 2d sess., II. Rep. \'M). parts 1 and 2, and also 4Sd Cong., 2d sess., H. .Mis. 
Docs. and SO.) On February 2."), ISH.'j, Congress declared the whole Texas Pacific land 
gmnt forfeited. (Sanborn, Congressional Grants of Land In Aid of Railways, 125; 
23 U. S. Stat. L., :?.'?7.) 

"•Poor, Manual. 1884, 887; Commercial and Financial Chronicle, March 12, 1881. 270. 

''Through trains to New Orleans were running by Fel)ruary 1. (Commercial and Finan- 
cial Chronicle, September 8, 1883, 265 ; Railroad Gazette, January 9, 1883, 51, and l"eb 
ruary 2, 1883, 83, 84.) 



PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. 115 

tered in the State." Around this as a nucleus other lines were assem- 
bled,'' and double construction was begun from San Antonio west, and 
from El Paso, or more accurately Sierra Blanca, east. Between El 
Paso and Sierra Blanca, a distance of about 90 miles, this new line 
and the Texas Pacific used the same track. In later years the Texas 
Pacific was drawn away from the Southern Pacific by its St. Louis, 
Iron Mountain and Southern connection at Texarkana into the Mis- 
souri Pacific System, and the combination route through San Antonio 
and Houston became the main line of the Southern Pacific. 

A third connection of the Southern Pacific across Texas was op- 
erated before the end of 1883, over its Mojave extension in California 
and the Atlantic and Pacific from the Needles to Albuquerque. The 
old Atlantic and Pacific, chartered with land grant in 1866, had built 
to Vinita by 1871, and had stopped there. It had defaulted after the 
panic, gone into receivership, and emerged as the St. Louis and San 
Francisco. But even after its emergence it refrained from construc- 
tion much beyond its Vinita terminus.f' Meanwhile the Atchison, To- 
peka and Santa Fe had reached Albuquerque, X. Mex. This road, 
building up the Arkansas through Kansas, possessed a land grant as 
far as the Colorado state line.'' Entering Colorado, it had passed by 
Las Animas and thrown a branch along the old Santa Fe trail to 
Santa Fe and Albuquerque. At this last point it came to an agree- 
ment with the St. Louis and San Francisco by which the two roads 
should build jointly from Albuquerque, under the Atlantic and Pa- 
cific franchise, into California, and rapid construction Had commenced 
in the period of revival.^ The Southern Pacific of California had 
not, however, relished a rival in its State, while the Atlantic and Pa- 
cific charter privilege extended to the Pacific. Long before the new 
road, advancing from Albuquerque, reached its Colorado crossing at 
the Needles a Mojave branch of the Southern Pacific was waiting at 
that point, ready by its presence to force the invading road to make 
terms Avith it for admittance. And thus upon the completion of the 
Colorado and Rio Grande bridges the Southern Pacific obtained its 
third entry into the East. Pullman cars Avere running into St. Louis 
on October 21, 1883.^ 

The names of Billings and A'illard are most closely connected with 
the renascence of the Northern Pacific. This line, with its generous 

" It was organized in 1850 as the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado. (H. H. Ban- 
croft, Works. XVI, .570.) 

"Commercial and Financial Chronicle, August 2.5, 188.S, 200. 

•■Railroad Gazette, May 11, 1883, 301; Commercial and Financial Chronicle, May 26, 
1883. 588. 

" Its 10-section land grant was liased upon a grant My Congress to the State of Kansas, 
March 3, 1863. (Report of the Commissioner of Railroads, 1S82, 208; 1883, 130.) It 
reached Albuquerque in April. 1880, and Deming in March, 1881. 

' Report of the Auditor of Railroad Accounts, 1880, 52. 

' Commercial and Financial Chronicle. October 20, 1883, 423 ; II. H. Bancroft, Cali- 
fornia, VII, 613; Railroad Gazette, October 26, 1883, 711. 



116 AMERICAN llItSTUlilCAL ASSUCIATI02v. 

land <?raiit. liad stopped before the panic at the Missouri River. In 
Ore^ron it had built a few niiies into its new terminal city. Tacoma. 
The illumination of crisis times had served to discredit the route 
which Jay Cooke had so effectively boomed in earlier days. The 
existence of various land-grant railways in Washington and Oregon 
made its revival diflicult to finance, since its various rivals could 
offer competition by l)oth river and rail along the Columbia Valley 
below Walla Walla. Under the presidency of Frederick Billings 
construction revived about 1879, from Mandan, opposite Bismarck, 
on the Missouri, and from Wallula, at the junction of the Columbia 
and Snake." From these points lines were jjushed over the Pend 
d'Oreille and Missouri divisions toward the Continental Divide. 
Below AVallula the Columbia Valley traffic was shared by agreement 
with the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, which, under 
the presidency of Henry Villard, owned the steamship and railway 
lines of Oregon.'^ As the time for opening the through route ap- 
j)roached the question of Columbia River competition increased in 
serious aspect, ^'^illard solved the })rol)lem through the agency of 
his famous blind pool,'" which still stands renuirkal)le in railway 
finance. With the proceeds of the pool he organized the Oregon and 
Transcontinental as a holding c()mi)any, and purchased a controlling 
interest in each of the rival roads. With harmony of plan thus 
insured, he assumed the presidency of the Northern Pacific in 1881, 
in time to complete and celebrate the opening of its main line in 
1883. He tried to give to this event a national aspect, but there 
were now four other through lines in operation, and a keen observer 
remarked that the "mere achievement of laying a continuous rail 
across the continent has long since been taken out of the realm of 
marvels, and the country can never feel again the thrill which the 
joining of the Central and Union Pacific lines gave it."'' 

The land-grant railways completed these eastern connections across 
the frontier in (he period of culmination. Private capital added an- 
other in the new route through Denver to OgdcMi, conti'olled l)y the 
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and the Denxcr and Rio (irande. 
The Burlington, built along the old Republican River trail to r>enver, 
had competed with the Union Pacific for the traffic of that point in 

" Smalloy, Northern raciflc, 229; Report of the Commissioner of Kailroads, 1883, 
1S5-144. 

"11. Villard. Memoirs of Henry Villard, .lournalist and I'inaucier, 1S:{5-1900, II, 284- 
289; Smalloy. Northern Pacific, 2.'5H. 

•■Villard. Memoirs, II, 297; Smalloy. 2(1'.» ; Ilonry ("lews. Twenty-eight Years of Wall 
Streel, 209-214. 

" Tho Nation. Scptoinlier l.!, iss:?, 21.'">, 21S. Tlio ceioliration was on September S, and 
was graced hy an oration by W. M. Kvarls. (Villard, II, .fll.) Villard was somewhat 
distrusted, I'oor remarking tliat much of tlie popular reluctance to buy railroad stocks 
was due to his "visionary schemes of immense magnitude." (Railroad Manual, 18S4, 
introd. III. See also Railroad (Jazctte, September 14, 188.'5, (!0(> ; Commercial and Finan- 
cial Chronicle. Sfpfembor 29. 188:5, Xn ; Engineering News. September 1.", 1883, 439; 
J. W. Johnston, Railway Land Grants, In North American Review, CXL, 280-289.) 



PACIFIC RAILROADS AND DISAPPEARANCE OF FRONTIER. 117 

June, 1882." West of Denver the narrow gauge of the Denver and 
Rio Grande had been advancing since 1870. 

Gen. William J. Palmer and a group of Philadelphia capitalists 
had, in 1870, secured a Colorado charter for their Denver and Rio 
Grande. Started in 1871, it had reached its new settlement and health 
resort at Colorado Springs that autumn, and had continued south in 
later years. Like other roads, it had progressed slowly in panic 
years. In 1876 it had been met at Pueblo by the Atchison, Topeka 
and Santa Fe. From Pueblo it contested successfully witli its rival 
for the grand canyon of the Arkansas,'' and built up that valley, 
through the Gunnison country, and across the old Ute Reserve to 
Grand Junction. From the Utah state line it had been continued to 
Ogden by the Denver and Rio Grande Western, an allied corpora- 
tion. A through service to Ogden, inaugurated in the summer of 
1883,^ brought to the Union Pacific for the first time, and for its 
whole business, a competition which it tried to offset by hurrying its 
own branches from Ogden, the Utah Northern and the Oregon Short 
Line, north into the field of the Northern Pacific. 

The continental frontier, upon which the first inroad had been made 
in 1869, was thus completely destroyed in 1881. Along six different 
lines between New Orleans and St. Paul it had been made possible 
to cross the sometime American desert to the Pacific States.'' No 
longer could any portion of the Republic be considered beyond the 
reach of colonization. Instead of a waste that forbade national 
unity and compelled a rudimentary civilization in its presence, a 
thousand plains stations beckoned for colonists and through lines 
bound the nation into an economic and political unit. That which 
General Sheridan had foreseen in 1882 was now a fact. He had 
written : "As the railroads overtook the successive lines of isolated 
frontier posts and settlements spread out over country no longer re- 
quiring military protection, the army vacated its temporary shelters 
and marched on into remote regions beyond, there to repeat and con- 
tinue its pioneer work. In rear of the advancing line of troops the 
primitive ' dugouts ' and cabins of the frontiersmen were steadily 
replaced by the tasteful houses, thrifty farms, neat villages, and busy 
towns of a people who knew how^ best to employ the vast resources 
of the great West. The civilization from the Atlantic is now reach- 
ing out toward that rapidly approaching it from the direction of the 
Pacific, the long intervening strip of territory, extending from the 
British possessions to Old Mexico, yearlj'^ growing narrower; finally 

« Poor, Manual, 1883, G94. 

Toor, Manual. 1881, 790; 188.% 889; J. C. Smiley, History of Denver, GOT. 

*• Railroad Gazette, August 3, 188."?, 510 ; H. H. Bancroft, Utah, 759 ; Poor, Manual, 
1884, 872. 

•'Of. H. R. Meyer, The Settlements with Pacific Railways, in guarterly .Tournal of 
Economics, XIII, 427-444. 



118 AMERICAN HISTORTCAL ASSOCIATION. 

the dividing lines will entirely disappear and the niinglinff settle- 
ments absorb the remnants of the once powerful Indian nations who, 
fifteen years ago. vainly attempted to forbid the destined progress 
of the age."° Within two j'ears after this utterance the frontier had 
finally disappeared, and with it had ended what Professor Turner 
has called '' the first period of American history." 

The significance of the frontier in American history has been con- 
sidered at length in recent years. After 1885 the historical i)r()blem 
is the significance of the disappearance of the frontier. In the change 
of epochs ])roblems change as well. National organization replaces 
sectional; state activities tend to give way to federal; corporate or- 
ganization succeeds individualistic; jiul)lic regidation supersedes ])ri- 
vate inilialive; and the imperative neetl for the creation of material 
equipment is transnnited into an e(|ual necessity for the control of the 
activities to which the former need gave birth. 

" Ket-oril of Knga},'ements witli Ilostili" Indians within the Military Division of the 
Missouri, from 1S6H to 1S82, Lleiit. Cmi. P. H. Slicridan, .•..muiauding, Chicago, issii, liio. 



DISCUSSION OF DOCTOR PAXSON'S PAPER." 



By B. H. Meyer. 



The paper on the Pacific Raih-oads and the Disappearance of the 
Frontier describes the primary waves of a movement, the secondary 
and tertiary waves of which are still in progress, emanating from 
the advancing railway systems like waves from a moving steamship. 

It is well known that analogies do not walk on all fours. However, 
I desire to suggest an analogy in the hope that it may clarify and 
emphasize what I have in mind. The institutions of this country, 
taken collectively, may be represented by a cable system, each cable 
having as many separate wires as there are distinct institutions. 
These cables, like our institutions, extend through many States, the 
most of them from ocean to ocean and from Gulf to Lakes. For 
reasons which are generally recognized and which need not be recited 
here, state lines are convenient if not necessary boundaries of terri- 
torial units for investigation. I should like to see a great series of 
monographs, each covering one institution in one State, correspond- 
ing to one strand in the cable, for every State in the Union, which 
could be turned over to the national historian of our economic and 
other institutions. With such a huge^ collection of state sections of 
wires and cables before him, the national historian would become 
the grand chief cable-splicer, and he could present to all the world 
the completed institutional cable system as it has developed and 
exists throughout the length and breadth of the United States. 

Unless a great army of state historians will prosecute its work 
diligently, we shall never have a complete national history. Railway 
history illustrates this point. In a general way it is known, for 
instance, that the inhabitants of certain cities opposed the physical 
union of continuous lines of railway, during early epochs of railway 
development, with sledge hammers, pitchforks, scythes, and similar 
weapons. The grotesque features of this type of mob opposition 
have been described for a few localities, but anything like a complete 
description of the events has not come to my notice, although many 

" Remarks made after the reading of three papers in American economic history, by 
the chairman of the railroad commission of Wisconsin. 

119 



120 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

States doubtless furnish ample material for a chapter on this subject. 
The historian of our political institutions would doubtless not con- 
sider it beneath his dignity to devote a chapter to violence :it the 
polls, like lassoing voters of certain persuasions on election day in 
western New York during Monroe's administration, but to the his- 
torian of our railways the facts referred to are equally interesting, 
ahhough neither nuiy be of much fundjpnental importance. 

During territorial days and the days of early statehood in AVis- 
consin numerous localities on Lake jNIichigan and on the Mississipj)i 
Kivcr vied with one another to become the termini of the proposed 
Milwaukee and Mississip])i Railway, which was to constitute the first 
link in the great transcontinental chain. Milwaukee, the present 
metropolis of this State, was tlien rebuked for arrogantly assuming 
leadership when such important places as Belmont and Mineral 
Point, not to speak of Kenosha, Racine, Sheboygan, on Lake Miciii- 
gan, Prairie du Chien, Potosi, and Snake Hollow, on the Mississippi 
River, had equal claim, in the oj^inion of the editors of those places, 
to the distinction of being leading towns in Wisconsin. The ambi- 
tion of those days was not always limited by the facts of geogra])hy 
and actual possibilities of innnediate development. A primitive 
editor of Fond du Lac held out to his readers the vision of teas and 
spices coming directly from China and Japan, which he regarded as 
a i)art of the West, over the transcontinental railway, which he desired 
to have constructed along the northern i-oute. The real rivalry 
among our southern, middle, and northern transcontinental railways 
of to-day was then a theoretical rivalry of subjective possibilities of 
competing localities interested in their respective routes. Horace 
Greeley entered into the discussion of the relative merits of these 
routes, and in one editorial he strikes the climax of his argument by 
practically ignoring all others except the fact that the circumference 
of the earth in the higher latitudes is much smaller than at the 
equator and southern latitudes, and that therefore any man with the 
sense of a schoolboy might know that the northern route was the 
most desirable one. Incidentally it should be observed that this 
early dream of the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railway being a link 
in a transcontinental chain is being realized to-day in the Pacific 
coast extension of the St. Paul S3^stem, of which the old Milwaukee 
and Mississi[)pi has long been a part. During the present month of 
December the track has been marching westward at the rate of 2 
miles and over per day. Secondary waves of frontier life are accom- 
panying this march. While the frontier has gone, it is still here. 
The i)rimary frontier has disappeared. The secondary frontier is^ 
the wave of conquest of our national resources on whose crest the 
frontiersman, of a diUVrent type, perhaps, but still a frontiersman, 
reigns supreme. That frontier still exists if we may rely upon the 



DISCUSSION OF DOCTOR PAXSON 's PAPER. 121 

accounts of the men who are sharing that life. Those of our honored 
members who come from the ancient East, which once was the United 
States, and which for some years thereafter continued to play a pre- 
dominating role in our national life, may not appreciate that this 
great AVest is only beginning to shake off the spray of the Atlantic. 
The vast empire ^vest of the Mississippi River has not yet been 
" scratched," and even here in old Wisconsin we are only beginning 
to lay our permanent foundations. The rivalry of cities, territorial 
groups, and transportation routes suggested in these remarks repre- 
sents cable sections Avhich are waiting for the state historian, who in 
turn must dedicate them to the national historian, provided he him- 
self does not act as chief cable-splicer. Historical accounts of events 
like these would be as fascinating as the greatest novel. 

Another illustration is found in the rivalry between different means 
of transportation. The introduction of the Conestoga wagon was 
opposed by the owners of pack horses. Both of these interests united 
with the interests represented by plank roads, turnpikes, and canals 
in opposition to the railway. More or less of this rivalry has con- 
tinued into our own times. Probably every State in the Union has 
material for a chapter upon this subject, yet in scarcely half a dozen 
of them has it been collected and wrought into a complete and accu- 
rate history. This is an important history — important not only be- 
cause of the knowledge which it affords regarding our industrial 
development, but also because of the bearing of this history upon con- 
temporary movements. The revival of our inland waterways has 
already been made a national issue. Before we enter upon a scheme 
of internal improvements, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, 
we should most assuredly inform ourselves wath respect to the hniita- 
tions and possibilities of that scheme. The past throws valuable side- 
lights upon this subject, both in the United States and in Europe. A 
mere sentimental appeal to waterways as a regulator of railway rates 
that would justify undertakings of greatest magnitude is nonsense. 
Waterways never have regulated railway rates. They have influenced 
them, sometimes to the extent of demoralization; but to influence is 
not to regulate. At no time in the history of internal improvements 
in the United States has it been more vital to obtain a technical basis 
for our projects than at present. First of all, engineers of highest 
attainment and absolute integrity must tell us whether a certain 
project is possible from an engineering standpoint, and as accurately 
as possible what it w'ill cost to complete it. Next, we must have a 
careful survey of the commerce of the country with a view of deter- 
mining how^ much it may reasonably be expected to gain from the con- 
templated improvement. Finally, having these facts before us, the 
people of this country may be left to decide for themselves whether 
they desire to have a certain improvement undertaken or not. Simply 



122 AMERICAN HTSTORTCAL ASSOCIATION. 

to proclaim that we want certain improvements, irrespective of the 
considerations named, is like wishing to ride in a Pullman coach to a 
distant planet. I am firmly convinced tliat this country has never 
faced a more critical situation with respect to internal improvements 
than that which is impending. It is to be hoped that State and na- 
tional historians will unite in bringing to the citizens of this country 
the true and complete facts of history. Prophetic vision must be 
utilized not only in arousing enthusiasm for a scheme, but also in 
putting into proper perspective its limitations. 

All of us could, no doubt, add many illustrations of special studies 
which must be undertaken l)efore our national economic history, at 
least, can be made complete, and of which the three papers before us 
are excellent illustrations. I desire, therefore, to repeat that we need 
special intensive study — monographs, more monographs, and many 
more monographs — sections of cables for our chief cable-splicers. 
The monographs suggested all have more or less of a practical bear- 
ing, but it should be needless to state that all historical research, 
whether practical or not, is here referred to. Those special studies 
which partake of a more practical nature constitute the ground upon 
which the academic man meets the executive, judicial, administrative, 
or legislative man. T assume that the aim of our efforts is to learn 
to know the real world of the j)ast and of the present in order that 
we may intelligently guide, in so far as guidance is possible, the 
future. We must look to the academic man and the scholarly pub- 
licists not connected with universities, like those represented in the 
membership of this association, to gather the many threads of the 
various phases of our national life and focus them upon a specific 
problem of to-day. Only in this way may we hope to act correctly 
regarding current questions. " The point of departure as well as 
the aim of our science is man " was the keynote of Roscher's first 
course of lectures at the University of Leipzig. Eoscher's words are 
still the best touchstone of economic study. In order to vitalize our 
study and make it real the academic man and the man of affairs must 
act in closest cooperation with each other lest there be reared two 
independent structures, the one that of the academic man. separate 
and apart from the real world in which we live, and therefore lack- 
ing vitality and intrinsic worth, and the other that of the imm of 
affairs, unsymmetricnl. crude, and ill-adjusted because it lacks the 
touch of the hand of full knowledge. 



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